Daily Doses: Wintercoats “Windmill” From Cathedral (2010)

There’s a point when you’re writing a story when you’ll most likely go too far.

You’ll know when it happens. Your crisp sentences will become bloated paragraphs. Your commas will turn into semicolons. Your descriptions transform into dissertations. Until finally, when you step back, your short story has become a novel.

At this point, the only thing to do is go back over it, and start cutting back the fat. Find all the elements that don’t support or advance the specific story you’re trying to tell, and cut ‘em out. Cut without passion or mercy. Cut what you love along with what you hate. Cut in any situation that you can, merely because you can.

This is a lesson Melbourne’s Wintercoats either never had to learn, or learned before they ever released a record. At the core of their songs, Wintercoats do a brilliant job at distilling their elements into exactly what the want to communicate. Even at 6 minutes, every trill and pluck forwards the exact story they want to tell. Making each song feel as though no matter the length they ended up at, it couldn’t be any shorter without sacrificing something beautiful.

Download Wintercoats’  Cathedral EP For Free From Their Bandcamp

(Via Yvynyl)